You start your workday just like you would any other day - you get dressed, make a quick breakfast and grab your cup of coffee. You arrive at the salon, check your appointment calendar to see your bookings for the day and which staff members are coming in. Everything is the same as always...or is it? Sure, salons have ups and downs, however, the most common mistake salon owners make is guesstimating their numbers. Before you continue reading, I recommend you create a free account with us in order to get a better understanding of the article - grab your account here.
Every successful business owner will tell you that guesstimating your financial standing can be the downfall of your salon. So why do salon owners continue to do this? The answer is quite simple - they prefer to avoid facing the music, especially at the end of the month, when it’s time to count up receipts and pay bills. But turning away from problems in the salon won’t make them disappear.
Guesstimating your earnings can have your calculations off by a few hundred to a few thousand pounds, which can spell life or death for your salon. Before small problems grow into massive ones, take appropriate actions to stop this from happening - and this is where Booksy comes in. In your system, click the “REPORTS” button on the left panel - now you can forget about guesstimating! Booksy reports accurately on all inflows, allowing you to see exactly where your business stands.
Everything. Guesstimating earnings is one thing, but product and treatment sales are something you need to avoid, especially if you are investing heavily into them. You’re a salon owner, which means there are days when you wish you could clone yourself - you need to tend to walk-in customers, create a stocktake, assign tasks to staff, monitor their work, create content for your social media pages and much more.
Now, what about that neon green balayage you’ve introduced to your menu some time ago, how has it been selling? You don’t have time to count each sale and you’ve seen clients order it from time to time. Your staff think it’s pretty good, and your gut tells you to introduce more neon colours. Then you realise that you are stuck with an inventory room full of neon colours that aren’t flying off the shelves.
Look over REAL data. In Booksy, go to REPORTS > REVENUE > Sales by services. Then, select the time frame you are interested in. You should give new treatments some time before you begin to measure their popularity - about a month to a month and a half. You might have introduced this treatment on a hunch that it would sell, and that’s fine. Sometimes you might hit the bullseye, but before you invest a large amount of time and money, look over your data!
Tip: You might also want to consider creating a poll on your fan pages. Ask clients what treatments they would like to see on your salon menu.
Like most salons, you have a marketing budget that you try to use sparingly, however, you need to promote your business one way or another. So, you distribute your budget on Facebook and Instagram ads, articles in your local newspaper and business cards. You and your team ask clients how they found the business, and after doing so for a while, you have guesstimated that most of your clients found your salon through the local newspaper. Your choice is obvious - you begin to spend more of your budget on this form of advertisement. Then, something odd happens - you begin to see a decline in new clients.
This is caused by a decision not backed by evidence, but made on a hunch. Sure, you can ask your staff at the end of the day: “where did most of the customers come from”, but if they are busy during the day, chances are they haven’t had the time to tally up the most popular acquisition source. And that’s where Booksy comes in. When adding new clients into your database, have staff ask the client how they found the business and then use client tags to report it in the system. At the end of the month, see which acquisition source brought you the most clients!
When running your beauty salon and any marketing activities, you want them to be based on real numbers, and not hunches or gut feelings. Booksy is there to help you become a better decision maker. Know how your salon is doing with just a few clicks! Sign up for your free account and get started!
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